White Pond

It's a white Christmas Eve for us. Here's a quick look down the road at the pond and what this evening's looking like. Growing up in the 1950's in Portland, High Street was a favorite place to visit leading up to Christmas. I actually do remember the time Dad first showed me the window in Starrett's Store on a shopping trip to find a special gift for Mom. Long before there were malls sprinkled all over, if you were shopping for Christmas, you went downtown. Petula Clark was right; it was all about Downtown. The large window was on the ground floor of the Eastland Hotel. The window was filled with train tracks, tiny snow-covered villages and four or more LionelTrains running throughout the various village scenes. What really made this window enchanting and jaw dropping was the metal plate on the window that when you placed your small hand on it made the trains move and the window come alive. A visit here was a ritual of pre-Christmas for my brother, sisters and me. I could have stayed there for hours, even in the cold of the season. Got a favorite Holiday Memory? HoHoHo!